1986 India

It was a little scary at the border I think it was Raxaul then because all sorts of unusual things were going on. So, our driver locked us in our rooms so we wouldn't have any problems that night.

The next morning we got on a bus in Bihar state, the people in Nepal didn't want us to go into India because they were worried we wouldn't be safe. However, we were trying to get to our friend Geshela, who was a Tibetan Lama from Kham province in Tibet that we met in Santa Cruz while he was helping Lama Yeshe pass over in the early 1980s. We were to meet him in Boghgaya, India where Guatama Buddha became enlightened under the Bodhi tree.

However, when myself, my wife and my three older kids (then 10, 12 and 14) were traveling by car from Kathmandu, Nepal to the border with India at Raxaul and then the next morning we got on board an Indian bus for the first time in our lives.

We really didn't know at all what to expect. So, when a lady dressed sort of like a gypsy asked us to get up and put something under all the cushions where we sat we were kind of worried she was a smuggler, smuggling contraband or something. However, then the police came in and searched under everyone's seat but ours and we started to realize that they didn't want trouble with Europeans or Americans because it was way above their pay grade at the time.

So, finally at the end of the bus ride we didn't know where to go or who to ask that we could trust there, the man likely for whom that lady worked smuggling told us where to go and what bus to get on next. This was the scary introduction to India for my family and I. We sort of realized we were way above our heads in understanding life in India in Bihar province.

about 10 to 20 years later I found out Bihar state is the headquarters for the Indian Mafia but we didn't know that then. But, somehow God took care of us anyhow. Eventually we got to Bodhgaya and found a place to stay for the night for one night. Then we found a better place for less a Magadh University a few miles away from Bodhgaya. So, we hired a horsecart and driver who dressed sort of like Jesus would have to drive us in his horsecart to and from the Kalachakra Tantric initiation with the Dalai Lama given to hundreds of thousands of people.

So, imagine about 300,000 to 500,000 people dressed like native Tibetans and native Sherpas and native Sri Lankans and native people that were Tibetan Buddhist from all over that area there for a week to receive the Kalachakra Tantric initiation that people get once in a lifetime to help them get into heaven (according to their teachings). So, for example, I met a man who had walked form Kham, Tibet all the way to BodhGaya. This would be something like walking from New York to California over the Rocky mountains with 20,000 foot passes. It took him 6 months to a year to get there.

After the initiation was over we rode by train (my family and Geshela and his Darjeeling Tibetan Buddhist English Translator) who was then about 25 years old named Lobsang after Geshela who was a relative I think.

We went first to Varanasi (Benares), India and saw the Burning Ghat and the Ganges and this also was where Sarnath where Prince Guatama Buddha from Lumbini first gave Buddhist teachings to Brahmin priests who became his first followers.

Later we traveled to the Taj Mahal in Agra by train and stayed in New Delhi for awhile before we took a train and then a bus to Dharamshala, India in Himachal Pradesh state at about 6000 feet in elevation.

Since we flew to Japan on December 11th 1985 and it was now well into January 1986 it was cold in the Himalayas at night and often got down to 25 to 30 degrees or lower then. But, there was no heat in the hotel rooms so we bought a kerosene portable stove there so we could sterilize water to drink and boil water for tea and to cook noodles and it also could warm the room. However, kerosene doesn't smell very good so it was always a battle between the kerosene smell and the cold.

But, usually about 1/2 hour with the kerosene stove cooking warmed the room up to about 65 degrees or more so we could sleep the night before it went down to 40 to 50 degrees inside again by morning.
We found boiling the water for 5 minutes so we could drink it was usually the best policy. then we would carry army canteens (one on each of our belts) during the day so we would always have drinking water with us during the days.

The view was very impressive of 20,000 foot peaks nearby and we were also at about 6000 feet as Dharamshala is along a ridgetop of a range of mountains that are Himalayan foothills ad 6000 feet to 7000 feet.

There were also 5 foot tall monkeys I believe that were silver and black that people told us ate pets and sometimes children so we should keep our doors locked at night when we went to sleep as they were three to four times stronger than any human.

They didn't scare me though. They were sort of very intelligent like humans and didn't bother us. They sort of knew their place at least during the day. I was scared by the smaller monkeys who would travel in groups of 50 to 100 because they might attack people if they got excited about something. So, feeding the smaller monkeys wasn't safe if they were in a large group or things could quickly get out of hand.

However, if it was just one little monkey you were usually okay. We got pictures of a monkey drinking orange soda from a pop bottle in Chitwan national Park on the Terai of Nepal and India. That was okay. But, if you visited Hindu temples they had people with 6 foot sticks to keep the smaller monkeys off the tourists and to keep them from throwing feces on tourists. So, the smaller monkeys when together in groups of 50 to 100 were actually more scary (most of the time) except when a Rhino tried to kill me at Chitwan National Park and almost succeeded.

Luckily, I pushed my wife up into a tree and he almost got me before I climbed up into about a foot through tree. Then he kept hitting the tree with his head and horn trying to kill me. The really wierd thing about this was that my wife had the camera so we got no really good shots of all this.

But, looking back, the really good thing is that none of us died from Rhinos because we were there during the mating season. When the males crashed into each other during the mating season during battles for their lady loves it sounded a lot like boxcars from trains crashing into each other.